Larry Elder to the GOP: ‘Stop talking to blacks like they are children’

Libertarian radio host Larry Elder has a message for the GOP: If the party has any hope of attracting a significant percentage of the black vote, it must speak to that community honestly — and as adults.

“Racism is no longer a major issue in this country. Racism is no longer a major issue in this country. Racism is no longer a major issue in this country,” he wrote in an email. “That Democrats have convinced blacks otherwise, is an affront.”

Elder argues that the greatest threat to the black community is not racism, but the scourge of absentee fathers.

“To avoid poverty, UCLA public policy professor James Q. Wilson said that everyone — not just blacks — must do three things: finish high school, don’t become a parent until at least the age of twenty, and get married before having a child. Do this and you will not be poor,” Elder said.

“I once asked Kweisi Mfume, then the head of the NAACP the following question: ‘As between the presence of white racism and the absence of black fathers, which poses the bigger threat to the black community.’ He immediately responded, ‘The absence of black fathers.’ Screaming about racism won’t solve this problem.”

“And if every white person, as my friend Walter Williams likes to say, suddenly became as pure as Mother Teresa, the problem of a 50 percent urban high school drop out rate would remain,” he added.

Elder went on to say that the GOP has to explain that the policies advocated by Democrats actually hurt the black community.

“Republicans need to explain how the welfare state has undermined the formation of traditional two-parent families,” he said, “that the Democratic Party’s allegiance to teachers unions means urban parents are forced to send their children to schools the parents don’t like; that policies like minimum wage hikes destroy jobs for the unskilled; and admitting students under ‘race-based preferences’ means a higher drop-out rate for the ‘affirmative action student’; that raising taxes on the rich threatens the prosperity of all.”

Elder’s book strays from politics to discuss a very personal story about how he and his late father made amends after years of tension between the two.

He spoke at length with TheDC about his book, his thoughts on November’s presidential election, and what the GOP needs to do to be competitive in 2016.